EIRES Lunch Lecture

You are warmly invited to join this EIRES Lunch lecture scheduled as follows:

Date
Friday 04 November 2022

Time
12h00-13h00 CET

Topic
Contours of a future Dutch Basic Industry Portfolio
How renewable power, green hydrogen and circular carbon might reshape industry

Speaker
Prof.dr.  Gert Jan Kramer | Utrecht University
Professor of sustainable energy supply systems
Chairman Sustainable Industry Lab

Organized by
EIRES | Focus Area - Engineering for Sustainable Energy Systems

Led by Principal Scientists
Niels Deen - John van der Schaaf

Introduction
In this EIRES lecture Gert Jan Kramer will present a high-level view of how renewable energy and green hydrogen in combination with ‘circular carbon’, i.e. carbon from biomass and waste, can form the basis for the transformation of the Dutch basic industry, specifically that of future fuels and chemicals. The story was developed within the Sustainable Industry Lab, a think tank set up to explore the future of Dutch industry in the context  of the energy transition and the drive towards a circular economy.

Moving away from oil and gas towards renewables and alternative sources of carbon implies an industrial transformation under constraints: there are limits in the availability of both renewable energy and of circular carbon. The global availability of each might ultimately lead to a redistribution of basic industrial production across the world. In that context I present an assessment of the Netherlands. 

The story is built around a simple model assessment of green hydrogen production in a power system that is dominated by wind and solar supply. The large offshore wind potential of the Netherlands offers a significant green energy resource for industrial use, even after the other main sectors of the Dutch energy system – transport and the built environment – have been fully serviced. Sources of circular carbon will have to significantly rely on imports since domestic resources are insufficient for an export-oriented industry. Together, these strands of analysis provide the high-level contours of the direction of industrial transformation. We have found that such an analysis provides that a basis for a broader societal debate, especially around the role of future imports of energy and carbon. To have such a debate is key to chart a course to a sustainable industrial portfolio.

About the speaker
Gert Jan Kramer (1961) holds an MSc (cum laude) and PhD (cum laude) in physics from Leiden University (1988).

After his PhD, he joined Shell at its Amsterdam research centre and worked as a scientist on catalysis and reactor engineering of refinery and gas processes. Since 2000 his work has increasingly focused on alternative fuels (notably hydrogen) and renewable energy. From 2010 to 2016 he was as Manager Energy Futures responsible for technology assessment of future energy technologies. He worked closely with Shell’s Scenarios team advising on future energy technologies.

He has been a part-time professor at the Technical University Eindhoven from 1998 until 2010 and at the Centre for Environmental Sciences of Leiden University from 2010 until 2016.

As of May 2016 he is Professor of Sustainable Energy Supply Systems at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. In Utrecht his research themes are ex ante assessment of low-carbon technologies, agent-based modelling of the energy transition, and the Dutch energy transition with a focus on the transformation of industry to achieve zero emissions. He co-founded and chairs the Sustainable Industry Lab, a network of experts from industry, government, societal and nature organizations and academia that aims to clarify the choices and consequences of the transformation of Dutch industry to 2050 in the light of the energy transition and the drive towards a circular economy.

Gert Jan is the author of over hundred and fifty peer-reviewed papers.

Full program
Download the invitation including full program 

Format
Online | MS Teams